An absent-minded professor's blog.

The Near Facebook Suicide

Started the year by nearly killing my Facebook existence. Haha!

Anyway, it’s not like I just made a split-second decision when I opted to merge my FB profile and my page. It pondered upon this for three months. Even tried surfing Facebook using my page instead of my profile and I didn’t see any visible problems except for the fact that I cannot subscribe to people. I could subscribe to pages and they were appearing in my news feed so it didn’t seem all that much of a bother (many of my friends have their own FB pages that I can subscribe to).

My reasons for wanting to convert were relatively simple:

Promising to be more active online and offline, I was looking at going past the 5,000 mark when it comes to adding contacts. Converting into a page should solve that problem.

When I’m very stressed, I become very emotional. So when I read negative stuff on my news feed (RH bill debates, bride burnings in India, etc.), I sometimes create volatile status messages that would horrify my mom enough to scold me via PM. No joke! Hahaha! If you’re creating a brand via an FB page, you will at least be forced to manage your emotions. For 2013, I wanted a complete “rebirth”…(instead I’m faced with identity suicide).

I was tired of maintaining a profile AND a page and I find it bothersome to create duplicate content.

Lastly…I wanted those “robust features” that Facebook promised.

By New Year — looking forward to starting over with a positive vibe (this is literal, as I knew FB will delete ALL your past posts during the conversion) — I went ahead and took the plunge, using Social Strand Media as a reference for a very careful step-by-step process. There are many things that Facebook doesn’t tell you, so I relied on this source. And it is a very reliable source, I may add, especially since the author seemed very happy with her decision to convert.

Unfortunately, there was a reason why the author was very happy. She did not encounter the problems I encountered. And as I mentioned, there are many things that Facebook doesn’t tell you:

Only HALF of my contacts were converted into the page. Even merging the old page with the newly converted one did not help. Many people who were both my friends AND liked my old page were not transferred on board.

The search bar is gone and there’s no bringing it back, even if I view the page as my profile.

Oh, and speaking of profiles… I mistakenly thought that my profile should be the same name as my page so that I can merge them properly. Now I can’t even use my real name anymore.

So yep. My name is now [firstname:skysenshi’s lastname:hermitage] and I can’t change that. There is no option to change your profile name. And many of my newer contacts who have actually been converted probably don’t know who Skysenshi is. I am still re-establishing the identity (even if I have been skysenshi since 1997). So yup, those contacts probably unsubscribed.

The worst part? The news feed that I used to see even when I was browsing as a page? Well, it’s now completely gone. I can’t even view the pages I subscribed to. A former colleague actually joked, “Now your page really is a Hermitage.”

So yeah…I have basically killed the only window I have to the outside world.

I can read my contacts’ pages and profiles but I cannot comment. I couldn’t even friggin’ greet a colleague a happy birthday! It’s like having a crystal ball inside your hermitage, but you can’t participate. People need to visit your hermitage to be able to get to you.

So far, I have yet to see where the “more robust” features are (see first image of Facebook’s promise).

What do I do now? Well, I will wait till Friday. If I cannot stand the silence anymore (all conversations are inside my wall and only if I start a topic), I will turn this into a social experiment while checking to see if Facebook will give me my identity back.

Yup. In FB's world, my first name is Skysenshi. XD Gah. I'm waiting to see the supposedly robust features till Friday. If they do not seem all that robust to me, I will have to appeal because this is irreversible.

About The Author

Doc B is a crazy cat lady, a former behavioral scientist turned video game producer, and a full professor. She is an INFJ who is married to an INTJ software engineer. You can grab a copy of her book by clicking the book thumbnail below.